Vibriophage and Cholera Disease

Phage typing is an important tool to discriminate the strains of Vibrio cholerae from epidemiological point of view. National Institute of Cholera & Enteric Diseases is engaged in research on cholera phages since decades in India. Bacteriophages have long been used for classification and discrimination of bacterial strains. Cholera, an endemic disease in Indian subcontinent with mild to lethal outcome has been studied in detail using a set of bacteriophages sensitive to a particular subtype to classify V. cholerae. So, bacteriophage typing of Vibrio cholera was an extremely important tool before few decades and still today it is very important. Other than typing, bacteriophages can be used as therapeutic and the field of phage therapy attains high importance in recent years. Phage therapy experiment was found effective in animal model where we found that the combination of five phages was highly effective and did nonetheless reduce the severity of cholera diarrhea. This novel approach will be further pursued by utilizing cocktail phage in preclinical and clinical trials. Our future strategy is to carry forward our mission by utilizing the cocktail phage in human volunteer study.